BelgiumKatholieke Universiteit Leuven (Catholic University of Leuven) Situated in Belgium, KU Leuven (Catholic University Leuven) has been a centre of learning for nearly six centuries. Today, it is Belgium’s largest university and, founded in 1425, one of the oldest and most renowned universities in Europe. As a leading European research university and co-founder of the League of European Research Universities (LERU), KU Leuven offers a wide variety of international master’s programmes, all supported by high-quality, innovative, interdisciplinary research.

KU Leuven hosts over 41,000 students, including 6,724 international students (3,455 students from within the EU and 3,269 students from outside the EU). KU Leuven has Erasmus contracts with 434 European universities and 22 central bilateral agreements in 8 countries: U.S.A, China, South Africa, Japan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Vietnam, Poland and the Netherlands. The amount of international students has more than doubled to about 7,400 students in ten years time. KU Leuven holds around 50 projects in development cooperation and educational inter-university cooperation .

KU Leuven offers its students an academic education based on high-level research, with the aim of preparing them to assume their social responsibilities. It is an internationally oriented university that carries out both fundamental and applied research. It is strongly inter- and multidisciplinary in focus and strives for international excellence. To this end, KU Leuven works together actively with its research partners at home and abroad . KU Leuven encourages personal initiative and critical reflection in a culture of idea exchange, cooperation, solidarity and academic freedom. It pursues a proactive diversity policy for its students and staff. KU Leuven aims to actively participate in public and cultural debate and in the advancement of a knowledge-based society. It puts its expertise to the service of society, with particular consideration for its most vulnerable members.

Leuven International Doctoral School for the Humanities and Social Sciences The KU Leuven Doctoral School for Humanities & Social Sciences represents 9 Faculties (Psychology & Educational Sciences, Arts, Social Sciences, Business & Economics, Law, Canon Law, Philosophy, Theology & Religious Studies, Fine & Performing Arts) and serves a cohort of just under 1,500 registered PhD students (some 30% of all KU Leuven PhD students). The doctoral school stands for openness and versatility. KU Leuven forms young scholars with an open view upon the world and its societies, within which they can take up their responsibility. Such broad-thinking scholars are undoubtedly an added value for society.

Team membersProf.dr. Orwtin De Graef After obtaining his Licentiate in Germanic Philology, prof. dr. Ortwin De Graef went to the University of Hull to study English. In 1990 he defended his PhD in Letters and Philosophy at the KU Leuven. He is the author of two books on Paul de Man and has published widely on Romantic and post-Romantic writing ranging from Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, and George Eliot over Isaac Rosenberg, Virginia Woolf and Pearl S. Buck to Hafid Bouazza, David Grossman, Alan Warner and A.L. Kennedy. His principal research interests are the Very-Long-Nineteenth-Century ideologies of sympathy, science, and the State reflected and refracted through the transmission technologies of the literary. He is vice dean for research of the Faculty of Arts and manager of the Humanities and Social Sciences Doctoral School.

Jef Schrooten, MA Jef Schrooten graduated in 2008 with a master’s degree in criminology and obtained a master’s degree in international politics in 2010. He has worked in Parliament and for the Minister of Home Affairs. In 2016 he started working for the Group of Human and Social Sciences at KU Leuven where he is involved in several projects concerning internationalization, language policies, and quality assurance in human and social sciences. He is also the secretary for the Central Europe Leuven Strategic Alliance, a cooperation agreement between Leuven and several central European universities.

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